Troubleshooting

Skwir doesn’t start

Skwir draws its window with Vulkan. Run skwir in a terminal to see what it says. Unable to init GPU context means no Vulkan driver was found: install your distribution’s, such as Mesa’s for AMD and Intel graphics (mesa-vulkan-drivers on Debian, Ubuntu and Fedora; vulkan-radeon or vulkan-intel on Arch).

A preview is missing

• The preview says what it needs. So does Settings › Plugins, beside the plugin waiting for it. Optional helpers lists them with their packages.
• Music and video don’t play: install skwir-media and GStreamer’s plugins (on Arch, the player is in the skwir package; its GStreamer plugins are optional dependencies).
• No picture for HEIC, AVIF or RAW photos: install a thumbnailer for them, or ImageMagick and bubblewrap.
• A format opens elsewhere instead: check its preview plugin is on in Settings › Plugins.

Something else

• A copy was cut short by a crash or a power cut: what it had copied waits in a hidden folder named .skwir-copy-… in the destination, never under the file’s own name. Skwir removes it at its next start or next copy there; on a network share, delete it yourself.
• Undo forgot a change: the history lasts while Skwir runs, not across a restart.
• Settings went back to their defaults: settings.toml could not be read. Your file is kept beside it as settings.toml.unreadable-… (Settings).
• An agent can’t connect: Skwir must be open with Agents and scripts on in Settings › Plugins (Scripts and agents).

Report a problem

Open an issue on GitHub with:

• your system: More › About Skwir › Copy details puts it on the clipboard;
• what you did, what you expected, and what happened;
• the log if you can: run RUST_LOG=skwir=debug skwir from a terminal.

Rename anything personal first: paths and file names say a lot about you, and a folder called taxes 2026 can be folder a in a report. A security problem goes to its private address, not to an issue.